Chapter Twenty-One
Lucy and Kevin sped through town to the hospital, about a ten minute drive from the church. Her first contraction hit just as she slid herself into one of the wheelchairs outside and Kevin pushed her through the sliding doors. The contraction was far more painful than what she went through when she was in the final stages of labor with the twins, and she grimaced with all her might to stop from screaming. The Kinkirks were in such a rush to get to the emergency ward that Lucy was still wearing her minister's robe, tassel and Roman collar.
After giving her insurance information, Kevin kissed his wife and said he'd rush home to grab her suitcase, which had been prepared a month before but was still in the garage apartment. As he walked out the front door, Dr. Hank Hastings rushed in and nearly hit the cop broadside.
"Oh, Kevin, sorry!" said Hank. "I got here as fast as I could; Annie paged me as soon as it happened."
"No problem, Hank," said Kevin. "Your niece awaits you . tell her I'll be back in twenty minutes."
Kevin walked out towards his wife's car, which was still running. Hank, meantime, wheeled Lucy towards the maternity ward.
"I'm glad to see you here, Hank," Lucy told her uncle. "But I thought you were celebrating the eight days of Passover this year, and refraining from working."
"I was basing that on you not going into labor for another week or so," replied Hank, as they went into the elevator and Hank pushed the button for the ninth floor. "But you're my niece, and family always comes first. I was there for Jennifer and Charles, and I want to deliver your daughter too. Oh, does Kevin know it's a girl?"
"No," said Lucy. The doors had closed in front of them and the elevator was now making its climb, beeping once as it passed each level. "All my siblings except Sam and David know, though. If they knew, they'd tattle. Maybe I should have told him after all, Hank, but he's been kind of hoping for another son and I think he's going to be disappointed."
"He'll get over it," said Hank, as the elevator reached their floor and the doors opened. He and Lucy went forward and turned left. "He loves you, and once he's thought it through he'll realize it doesn't matter what sex it is, as long as it's healthy."
"And is it?" asked Lucy, as they neared the room awaiting her.
"For the tenth time, yes," said Hank.
A few seconds later, they reached Room 12. Hank wheeled Lucy to the bed, on which a hospital robe was laid out. After helping his niece out of the wheelchair to sit on the bed, he pulled the privacy curtain around it, and told his niece to undress and put the robe on, buttoned only around her mid- riff. Lucy took several minutes to do so, dreading the next contraction. Finally, she pulled the curtain away, and Hank began attaching the various cuffs and electrodes for the fetal monitor around her body.
"I hope you don't mind this, Luce," said Hank, as he placed one of the electrodes on her cleavage, below which laid her heart.
"There's nothing there you haven't seen before, Hank," Lucy told her uncle flatly. "Besides, after the roller-coaster this family's been through the last year, including my sister and me being totally humiliated before the whole town, giving birth is almost a relief. And you're not like . well, you know."
At that moment, Lucy had her next contraction. It wasn't as powerful as the first, but Lucy recoiled and her head slammed backwards into the pillow. She knew by experience what to do; inhaling and exhaling repeatedly until the worst was over. Hank's hand was holding hers all this time.
"Man, that was a whopper!" said Lucy breathlessly, and grabbing a huge glass of ice water, gulping it down. "At that rate, I could be out of her before midnight!"
Kevin rushed into the room, followed by the family that was currently in Glen Oak. Peter came in last, wearing the gold chain and cross Ruthie had given him. The Easter service had ended around the time Lucy was wheeled into the room and they all wanted to make sure the minister was doing fine.
"I'm okay, guys," said Lucy. "If memory serves, the rules say only one or two at a time, so . um, Mom and Kevin, you're first. Hank, would you?"
At that moment, a Dr. Catherine Ellison, the deputy director of gynecology at the hospital, popped in. As Hank led the crowd out, Catherine went up to the bedside and she checked the monitor. The baby was doing fine. But there was something that caught the doctor's eye.
"Lucy," said Catherine, "your blood pressure appears to be quite low for a woman who's supposed to be in labor, even between contractions."
"Is there anything wrong with that?" asked Lucy, a little worried. Annie and Kevin looked at each other, a little nervous too.
"It's not, at least not yet," said Catherine. "But there are a couple of possibilities you have to be aware of. One is that at some point, the pressure and your heart rate might spike up, way up."
"You mean eclampsia," said Lucy. "What Mom had when she had Matt - what nearly killed both of them in childbirth."
"Oh, you know about that," said Catherine. "Well, we have a protocol for that in case it happens to you. The same thing if the contractions stay relatively far apart and you don't dilate fast enough."
"Wait a minute, doctor," said Kevin. "If you're talking about a c-section, forget it. Lucy's doing this the normal way, we both discussed it."
"If it was a matter of life or death," said Annie testily, "and you had to choose between a c-section and your wife dying, what would you choose, Kevin? If I had to do it all over again, I would've insisted on a c- section to get Matt out. That would've meant him being delivered instead of born, but he wouldn't have been in an incubator for six weeks and I wouldn't have been in intensive care for two months!"
"All right, Annie, I get your point," said Kevin contritely. "I should point out, though, that would've also meant all your other children would've had to been delivered surgically, too."
"Oh, knock it off guys!" snapped Lucy. "Who gives an 'f' if my siblings were 'born' or 'delivered'? That's just semantics. They're here, they're part of my life, and I love them all. For what it's worth, I don't want a c-section, either, but if it comes to that, I'll take one. When will you know, Dr. Ellison?"
"We usually give a woman twenty-four to thirty-six hours, depending on her age and size, for her cervix to dilate ten centimeters - that's when the womb's entry gets big enough for the baby to make his or her way down the vagina," replied Catherine. "If it's not up to five within the first twenty-four, we don't wait any longer because even the constitution of a Ms. Olympia couldn't stand the strain of labor anymore. We go for a c- section. If there's even the hint of eclampsia, however, we won't wait a minute longer, Lucy. We'll get you in the delivery room and yank that baby out via your tummy as fast as we can - Hank and I, working together, can do it in about forty-five seconds."
"Well, let's hope we can do it the normal way, but if 'from his or her mother's womb untimely ripped' my baby must be, as was Macduff, then it shall be." The doctor left to check on another patient.
Annie looked at her daughter oddly, surprised she would quote almost verbatim from Shakespeare's Macbeth. Indeed that was Macbeth's downfall in the play, believing he was going to remain King of Scotland until natural death because the Weird Sisters, or the apparitions they conjured rather, told him no man born of woman could harm him - not realizing that his archrival Macduff was born by a c-section.
"I'm sorry, guys," said Lucy. "I guess I wasn't planning on this happening today. In fact, I think Kevin and I agree that this whole pregnancy was totally unplanned, too."
"Is that true?" asked Annie.
"It is, Annie," admitted Kevin. "Lucy and I have talked about getting fixed, but we decided against it. As soon as she's able to, Lucy's going on the Pill again. We're not going to have another kid for at least seven or eight more years. Yes, I do have family wealth, but I don't want to rely totally on that. And between raising the kids we already have and running the church, Lucy just won't have time anymore - at least until she can put her own personal mark on the church, now that Eric's throwing in the towel too."
"Well, Mom, I can totally relate to you now," said Lucy. "Um, there is just one thing that I've always wondered about. You told me about the night I was conceived. What about the night I was born?"
"Not much to say," said Annie, shrugging. "Of all the pregnancies and labors I went through, yours was the easiest. You were three weeks premature, and I was in labor for only two and a half-hours. The contractions just came one right after another, two to three minutes apart. I pray you'll be okay. You gave me two grandchildren already, and I want to be able to see you hold my third."
"Thanks, Mom. I love you so much!" said Lucy, a tear streaming down her face. "And I love you Kevin, for giving me this wonderful gift, even if it was unexpected."
"I only gave you the seed, Luce," smiled Kevin, and leaning over to kiss Lucy. "We conceived the baby together and you've given it a home these past nine months and two weeks. I couldn't imagine any woman being the mother of my children other than you."
They kissed again. Then Kevin and Annie stepped out of the room. Lucy then spent some time with Mary and Robbie, then Simon and Deena, and finally Ruthie and Peter. Each gathering was more emotional than the last, with Peter holding Lucy's hand nearly the entire time as she endured a series of irregular contractions.
The afternoon gave way to the evening, then night, then morning. The gang was pacing the floors over and over, waiting and waiting and waiting, ordering Chinese and pizza takeout, and pacing even more. By noon the next day, Hank and Catherine, who had downed several pots full of coffee to stay awake, gave up.
"Lucy," Hank told his niece, "you gave it your best shot. You really did. But even with your blood pressure and heartbeat back to normal and your contractions regular for the last twelve hours or so, the fact is you've been in labor for twenty-seven hours and you're only up to six centimeters. It's time to get this baby out. Are you ready for that?"
"Let's rock!" said Lucy. She had dreaded this just the day before, but now she seemed almost cheerful about it, a challenge more than a curse.
Catherine gave Lucy an epidural and another anesthetic to freeze her tummy. Then the two doctors helped Lucy from her bed onto a stretcher, and with Kevin by her side they went down the hall to the delivery room. Lucy laid herself on the steel bed, and a curtain was drawn between her neck and her breasts. Catherine made an incision across Lucy's tummy, a millimeter at a time, then a second one on the uterus. Then Hank reached in, scrapped off the placenta from the womb and lifted the baby out of Lucy's body. It started crying immediately.
"Congratulations, Kevin," said Hank, as he handed the baby to Catherine so it could be cleaned up. "You have another daughter!"
"A girl," said Kevin. "That's great! I can wait for another son . I'm just glad she's alive and so is Lucy!"
"Oh, Kevin, I love you so much," said Lucy from behind the curtain. Kevin pulled it away and started kissing his wife, who was already out of breath but had waited for this moment. They held the kiss for an entire minute, long enough for the baby to be cleaned up and for Hank to hand him the scissors to cut the umbilical cord.
"I'll leave you guys alone for a while, while you think of a name for your daughter," said Hank.
"That's okay, Hank," Lucy told her uncle, "we thought of one already. Since it's a girl, we're naming her Rhiannon Ruthie, in honor of the two girls most responsible for the downfall of Henderson. Buddha was said to have written that a child without courage is like a night without stars; and it took all the courage in the world for that woman and my sister to stand up and do what was right. We don't want our daughter to ever forget that - we want her to lead and not follow, too."
"Good for you, Lucy," said Catherine. "Congratulations to both of you. I'll let the gang know."
"Wait a minute," said Kevin, realizing the implication of what Lucy had just said. "You knew it was going to be a girl?"
"Months ago," admitted Lucy. "I wanted it to be a surprise this time, only because we were all under so much pressure. I hope you're not mad at me."
"Forget it," said Kevin. "I wouldn't have cared either way. But next time, Luce, let me know. We're in this together, remember."
Lucy nodded, and kissed her husband once more. She held up little Rhiannon to her left breast and the baby began to suckle on her mother.
The group was ebullient over the news. Mary and Deena felt especially grateful for Lucy, because she was first to the finish line this season, and the successful delivery was the push they needed to see the rest of their pregnancies through. Ruthie, however, had mixed feelings. While she was grateful to be an aunt again, she wished she still was pregnant and on her way to having hers and Peter's son, so they could have spited Henderson the way Lucy just had. But Peter brought her back to reality.
"I wasn't ready to be a father, Ruthie," said Peter. "Your due date would have been the middle of May, around the time of our final exams. On the fast track we're on, there are no deferred exams. And besides, honey, Dale Carnegie said it best, 'don't kick a dead dog.' What's done is done, and there's nothing we can do about it. When you are ready, I will be, and we're going to make great parents. Right now, I can think of only one way we can celebrate my baptism."
"What's that?" his girlfriend/godmother asked.
"Monday night. Remember? It's Lou and Annie's Bible study group at the church?"
"That's right, I totally forgot about that," said Annie. "I'll take a pass tonight, for obvious reasons. Say hi to Lou. What's the topic for tonight?"
"Something about the difference between a man's honor and a woman's shame in Biblical times," said Ruthie.
"Ewww," said Peter. "Being a Christian is going to be harder than I thought."
The group laughed. Ruthie kissed Peter and said, "At least you're going to get a lot of help - starting with Number One." She pointed upwards. Hand in hand, they walked down the hall to the elevator, towards the early summer breeze and a leisurely stroll to the church where a number of their fellow teenagers were waiting for Lou to start the meeting.
Lucy and Kevin sped through town to the hospital, about a ten minute drive from the church. Her first contraction hit just as she slid herself into one of the wheelchairs outside and Kevin pushed her through the sliding doors. The contraction was far more painful than what she went through when she was in the final stages of labor with the twins, and she grimaced with all her might to stop from screaming. The Kinkirks were in such a rush to get to the emergency ward that Lucy was still wearing her minister's robe, tassel and Roman collar.
After giving her insurance information, Kevin kissed his wife and said he'd rush home to grab her suitcase, which had been prepared a month before but was still in the garage apartment. As he walked out the front door, Dr. Hank Hastings rushed in and nearly hit the cop broadside.
"Oh, Kevin, sorry!" said Hank. "I got here as fast as I could; Annie paged me as soon as it happened."
"No problem, Hank," said Kevin. "Your niece awaits you . tell her I'll be back in twenty minutes."
Kevin walked out towards his wife's car, which was still running. Hank, meantime, wheeled Lucy towards the maternity ward.
"I'm glad to see you here, Hank," Lucy told her uncle. "But I thought you were celebrating the eight days of Passover this year, and refraining from working."
"I was basing that on you not going into labor for another week or so," replied Hank, as they went into the elevator and Hank pushed the button for the ninth floor. "But you're my niece, and family always comes first. I was there for Jennifer and Charles, and I want to deliver your daughter too. Oh, does Kevin know it's a girl?"
"No," said Lucy. The doors had closed in front of them and the elevator was now making its climb, beeping once as it passed each level. "All my siblings except Sam and David know, though. If they knew, they'd tattle. Maybe I should have told him after all, Hank, but he's been kind of hoping for another son and I think he's going to be disappointed."
"He'll get over it," said Hank, as the elevator reached their floor and the doors opened. He and Lucy went forward and turned left. "He loves you, and once he's thought it through he'll realize it doesn't matter what sex it is, as long as it's healthy."
"And is it?" asked Lucy, as they neared the room awaiting her.
"For the tenth time, yes," said Hank.
A few seconds later, they reached Room 12. Hank wheeled Lucy to the bed, on which a hospital robe was laid out. After helping his niece out of the wheelchair to sit on the bed, he pulled the privacy curtain around it, and told his niece to undress and put the robe on, buttoned only around her mid- riff. Lucy took several minutes to do so, dreading the next contraction. Finally, she pulled the curtain away, and Hank began attaching the various cuffs and electrodes for the fetal monitor around her body.
"I hope you don't mind this, Luce," said Hank, as he placed one of the electrodes on her cleavage, below which laid her heart.
"There's nothing there you haven't seen before, Hank," Lucy told her uncle flatly. "Besides, after the roller-coaster this family's been through the last year, including my sister and me being totally humiliated before the whole town, giving birth is almost a relief. And you're not like . well, you know."
At that moment, Lucy had her next contraction. It wasn't as powerful as the first, but Lucy recoiled and her head slammed backwards into the pillow. She knew by experience what to do; inhaling and exhaling repeatedly until the worst was over. Hank's hand was holding hers all this time.
"Man, that was a whopper!" said Lucy breathlessly, and grabbing a huge glass of ice water, gulping it down. "At that rate, I could be out of her before midnight!"
Kevin rushed into the room, followed by the family that was currently in Glen Oak. Peter came in last, wearing the gold chain and cross Ruthie had given him. The Easter service had ended around the time Lucy was wheeled into the room and they all wanted to make sure the minister was doing fine.
"I'm okay, guys," said Lucy. "If memory serves, the rules say only one or two at a time, so . um, Mom and Kevin, you're first. Hank, would you?"
At that moment, a Dr. Catherine Ellison, the deputy director of gynecology at the hospital, popped in. As Hank led the crowd out, Catherine went up to the bedside and she checked the monitor. The baby was doing fine. But there was something that caught the doctor's eye.
"Lucy," said Catherine, "your blood pressure appears to be quite low for a woman who's supposed to be in labor, even between contractions."
"Is there anything wrong with that?" asked Lucy, a little worried. Annie and Kevin looked at each other, a little nervous too.
"It's not, at least not yet," said Catherine. "But there are a couple of possibilities you have to be aware of. One is that at some point, the pressure and your heart rate might spike up, way up."
"You mean eclampsia," said Lucy. "What Mom had when she had Matt - what nearly killed both of them in childbirth."
"Oh, you know about that," said Catherine. "Well, we have a protocol for that in case it happens to you. The same thing if the contractions stay relatively far apart and you don't dilate fast enough."
"Wait a minute, doctor," said Kevin. "If you're talking about a c-section, forget it. Lucy's doing this the normal way, we both discussed it."
"If it was a matter of life or death," said Annie testily, "and you had to choose between a c-section and your wife dying, what would you choose, Kevin? If I had to do it all over again, I would've insisted on a c- section to get Matt out. That would've meant him being delivered instead of born, but he wouldn't have been in an incubator for six weeks and I wouldn't have been in intensive care for two months!"
"All right, Annie, I get your point," said Kevin contritely. "I should point out, though, that would've also meant all your other children would've had to been delivered surgically, too."
"Oh, knock it off guys!" snapped Lucy. "Who gives an 'f' if my siblings were 'born' or 'delivered'? That's just semantics. They're here, they're part of my life, and I love them all. For what it's worth, I don't want a c-section, either, but if it comes to that, I'll take one. When will you know, Dr. Ellison?"
"We usually give a woman twenty-four to thirty-six hours, depending on her age and size, for her cervix to dilate ten centimeters - that's when the womb's entry gets big enough for the baby to make his or her way down the vagina," replied Catherine. "If it's not up to five within the first twenty-four, we don't wait any longer because even the constitution of a Ms. Olympia couldn't stand the strain of labor anymore. We go for a c- section. If there's even the hint of eclampsia, however, we won't wait a minute longer, Lucy. We'll get you in the delivery room and yank that baby out via your tummy as fast as we can - Hank and I, working together, can do it in about forty-five seconds."
"Well, let's hope we can do it the normal way, but if 'from his or her mother's womb untimely ripped' my baby must be, as was Macduff, then it shall be." The doctor left to check on another patient.
Annie looked at her daughter oddly, surprised she would quote almost verbatim from Shakespeare's Macbeth. Indeed that was Macbeth's downfall in the play, believing he was going to remain King of Scotland until natural death because the Weird Sisters, or the apparitions they conjured rather, told him no man born of woman could harm him - not realizing that his archrival Macduff was born by a c-section.
"I'm sorry, guys," said Lucy. "I guess I wasn't planning on this happening today. In fact, I think Kevin and I agree that this whole pregnancy was totally unplanned, too."
"Is that true?" asked Annie.
"It is, Annie," admitted Kevin. "Lucy and I have talked about getting fixed, but we decided against it. As soon as she's able to, Lucy's going on the Pill again. We're not going to have another kid for at least seven or eight more years. Yes, I do have family wealth, but I don't want to rely totally on that. And between raising the kids we already have and running the church, Lucy just won't have time anymore - at least until she can put her own personal mark on the church, now that Eric's throwing in the towel too."
"Well, Mom, I can totally relate to you now," said Lucy. "Um, there is just one thing that I've always wondered about. You told me about the night I was conceived. What about the night I was born?"
"Not much to say," said Annie, shrugging. "Of all the pregnancies and labors I went through, yours was the easiest. You were three weeks premature, and I was in labor for only two and a half-hours. The contractions just came one right after another, two to three minutes apart. I pray you'll be okay. You gave me two grandchildren already, and I want to be able to see you hold my third."
"Thanks, Mom. I love you so much!" said Lucy, a tear streaming down her face. "And I love you Kevin, for giving me this wonderful gift, even if it was unexpected."
"I only gave you the seed, Luce," smiled Kevin, and leaning over to kiss Lucy. "We conceived the baby together and you've given it a home these past nine months and two weeks. I couldn't imagine any woman being the mother of my children other than you."
They kissed again. Then Kevin and Annie stepped out of the room. Lucy then spent some time with Mary and Robbie, then Simon and Deena, and finally Ruthie and Peter. Each gathering was more emotional than the last, with Peter holding Lucy's hand nearly the entire time as she endured a series of irregular contractions.
The afternoon gave way to the evening, then night, then morning. The gang was pacing the floors over and over, waiting and waiting and waiting, ordering Chinese and pizza takeout, and pacing even more. By noon the next day, Hank and Catherine, who had downed several pots full of coffee to stay awake, gave up.
"Lucy," Hank told his niece, "you gave it your best shot. You really did. But even with your blood pressure and heartbeat back to normal and your contractions regular for the last twelve hours or so, the fact is you've been in labor for twenty-seven hours and you're only up to six centimeters. It's time to get this baby out. Are you ready for that?"
"Let's rock!" said Lucy. She had dreaded this just the day before, but now she seemed almost cheerful about it, a challenge more than a curse.
Catherine gave Lucy an epidural and another anesthetic to freeze her tummy. Then the two doctors helped Lucy from her bed onto a stretcher, and with Kevin by her side they went down the hall to the delivery room. Lucy laid herself on the steel bed, and a curtain was drawn between her neck and her breasts. Catherine made an incision across Lucy's tummy, a millimeter at a time, then a second one on the uterus. Then Hank reached in, scrapped off the placenta from the womb and lifted the baby out of Lucy's body. It started crying immediately.
"Congratulations, Kevin," said Hank, as he handed the baby to Catherine so it could be cleaned up. "You have another daughter!"
"A girl," said Kevin. "That's great! I can wait for another son . I'm just glad she's alive and so is Lucy!"
"Oh, Kevin, I love you so much," said Lucy from behind the curtain. Kevin pulled it away and started kissing his wife, who was already out of breath but had waited for this moment. They held the kiss for an entire minute, long enough for the baby to be cleaned up and for Hank to hand him the scissors to cut the umbilical cord.
"I'll leave you guys alone for a while, while you think of a name for your daughter," said Hank.
"That's okay, Hank," Lucy told her uncle, "we thought of one already. Since it's a girl, we're naming her Rhiannon Ruthie, in honor of the two girls most responsible for the downfall of Henderson. Buddha was said to have written that a child without courage is like a night without stars; and it took all the courage in the world for that woman and my sister to stand up and do what was right. We don't want our daughter to ever forget that - we want her to lead and not follow, too."
"Good for you, Lucy," said Catherine. "Congratulations to both of you. I'll let the gang know."
"Wait a minute," said Kevin, realizing the implication of what Lucy had just said. "You knew it was going to be a girl?"
"Months ago," admitted Lucy. "I wanted it to be a surprise this time, only because we were all under so much pressure. I hope you're not mad at me."
"Forget it," said Kevin. "I wouldn't have cared either way. But next time, Luce, let me know. We're in this together, remember."
Lucy nodded, and kissed her husband once more. She held up little Rhiannon to her left breast and the baby began to suckle on her mother.
The group was ebullient over the news. Mary and Deena felt especially grateful for Lucy, because she was first to the finish line this season, and the successful delivery was the push they needed to see the rest of their pregnancies through. Ruthie, however, had mixed feelings. While she was grateful to be an aunt again, she wished she still was pregnant and on her way to having hers and Peter's son, so they could have spited Henderson the way Lucy just had. But Peter brought her back to reality.
"I wasn't ready to be a father, Ruthie," said Peter. "Your due date would have been the middle of May, around the time of our final exams. On the fast track we're on, there are no deferred exams. And besides, honey, Dale Carnegie said it best, 'don't kick a dead dog.' What's done is done, and there's nothing we can do about it. When you are ready, I will be, and we're going to make great parents. Right now, I can think of only one way we can celebrate my baptism."
"What's that?" his girlfriend/godmother asked.
"Monday night. Remember? It's Lou and Annie's Bible study group at the church?"
"That's right, I totally forgot about that," said Annie. "I'll take a pass tonight, for obvious reasons. Say hi to Lou. What's the topic for tonight?"
"Something about the difference between a man's honor and a woman's shame in Biblical times," said Ruthie.
"Ewww," said Peter. "Being a Christian is going to be harder than I thought."
The group laughed. Ruthie kissed Peter and said, "At least you're going to get a lot of help - starting with Number One." She pointed upwards. Hand in hand, they walked down the hall to the elevator, towards the early summer breeze and a leisurely stroll to the church where a number of their fellow teenagers were waiting for Lou to start the meeting.